Change Doesn't Give You a Warning
by DieZeitVergeht
Summary: It's unpredictable. You never know when you're going to change, why you're going to change, or to what extent. Beca deals with the aftermath of her life, after the ICCA's, changing beyond her control. (Strong language, mild-mature content). One-shot.


It was supposed to be a one-time thing, you know? Nothing big was supposed to happen. No one was supposed to fall in love.

But sometimes life just likes to fuck you over.

And somehow I've managed to fall in love with my best friend while fucking up our friendship in the process.

The last time she came to visit me in LA was last July, seven months after I first moved out there to get away from everything on the east coast.

It's June now, so I guess that means I've been helplessly in love with the one person I knew could break me for almost a year now. But if I'm being completely honest, I fell in love with her sometime during my first and only (full) year at Barden.

Yeah, I couldn't go through with staying at Barden. But is that really a surprise? I had friends I cared (and still do care) about. My dad and I were sort of, almost, kind of working towards a father/daughter relationship again. I had a boyfriend. My life wasn't supposed to get complicated after that.

I left Barden as soon as I finished out that next fall semester.

Something changed.

_Everything_ had changed.

I was supposed to be happy with my life now, there was no reason for me to hate everything again.

Do you know what the worst part about life is though? No?

It's that everything has to change sometime.

It just fucking _sucks_ knowing that things you don't want to change, will change. Everything that makes you happy, you know?

I can't even kid myself, nothing felt the same when I returned to Barden in August.

Chloe was gone.

Aubrey was gone.

_I_ was running the Bellas.

Jesse was the perfectly doting boyfriend.

I returned to the station too. Luke, who was staying for an extra semester, was finally letting me start running my own shows. It started off as a late show every Friday, then progressed until I was in the booth every other night.

My life had definitely been looking up from the time of the ICCA finals it seemed. I thought it was coincidence, but good things just kept happening for me. Like after just the first month of running my own shows, I received a call from a local club pretty much demanding that I come play a set the first Friday of October.

That show wasn't the best, but I mean, come on I was a nervous wreck. The Bellas showed up, Jesse and a few other Trebles showed up, my dad even came too. Everyone reassured me that the set was amazing, but I just shrugged off the comments like usual.

Apparently it really was good, because the owner of the club offered me a contract on the spot for Friday and Saturday nights, playing gigs (which paid some good money, which went directly to funds for LA).

But luck is just a temporary thing. And that's when everything started going downhill at Barden.

Jesse became someone I didn't know. He was getting increasingly jealous. He was picking fights for no reason. He'd cancel on the rare plans we could make.

I was struggling to keep up with my classes.

I had more shows at the station and gigs at the club.

And most importantly, I had the Bellas to run.

And then one night two weeks before Regionals, Stacie and Cynthia Rose showed up at the dorm room that Amy and I were sharing this year. It was my one free night. The first one I'd had since I took on the club gigs.

They were on a date (oh yeah, they started dating too, which was pretty cute I guess) at Trolley's, the diner on the edge of campus. I knew they didn't have good news. You can tell when someone isn't going to tell you something that's good. There's that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you look into the eyes and read the expressions on your friends' faces.

I made the mistake of thinking that I could handle what they had to tell me.

Turns out Jesse'd been on a date that night too. Only, the first thing that was wrong with that statement was that it wasn't with me. The second thing that was wrong, was the fact that he had taken out one of the new Bellas recruits.

They tried to tell me that they thought it was some friendly dinner or something, like they didn't know the circumstances. Because yeah, maybe they had to study for a class or any other platonic reason. But then when Jesse slid into the booth she was sitting on and leaned over to kiss her, that's when they knew they had to tell me (unfortunately I just wish that Stacie wouldn't have showed me the picture she had taken as proof).

And yeah, I was happy they did tell me. Both of them (plus Amy) had become my best friends.

But I was livid. Who wouldn't be?

The next morning at rehearsal, the new recruit, Brooke, was kicked off of the Bellas and that night I broke up with Jesse.

He tried to deny it. I just shoved my phone in front of his face with the picture that I had Stacie send me.

And that's when he started saying that he wouldn't have had to do that if I hadn't been neglecting him.

Yes, I was busy, busier than I had planned at the beginning of the year. But he'd told me that it was okay and he could handle it.

I should've seen the signs really, but then again I've always been pretty clueless about some things.

And that's when this change idea comes back. Sometimes you just don't realize that anything has changed. It just comes creeping up on you and before you know it, you're a different fucking person than you were at the beginning of the year.

It was out of my control though, change doesn't give you a warning.

The one thing I never wanted to change was my friendship with Chloe. We spent the summer in almost constant contact. When we weren't texting, she was forcing me to Skype her or we were talking on the phone late at night.

She was back in her hometown of Miami and I was back in Seattle with my mom.

The time difference never bothered her. Even if it was three in the morning where she was and midnight where I was, she never once complained. She made sure to send me a good morning text, that she knew I'd read eventually. She never complained when it took me until noon (sometimes later) to text her back, even though half her day was already gone, she'd spend practically the next twelve hours texting me anyway.

Once school was back in, our Skype and phone calls were slowly becoming a thing of the past, but we continued to text (as much as possible). She was now in New York at NYU studying for her Master's degree in Music Theory. Aubrey was there too, getting her law degree.

Slowly though, she stopped sending good morning texts, I stopped responding to her until almost seven most nights. And then when the gigs started, we lost contact save for a scarce number of "I miss you" texts every few days.

It wasn't until the break up with Jesse did I realize we'd stopped texting altogether.

I called out sick from the station that night, and while I was sure Luke would be pissed, he surprised me and said he'd cover my shifts for the rest of the week. I wasn't complaining.

That same night, I didn't even hesitate in calling Chloe.

And just like that, everything with her felt like it was back to normal. But that's the thing about stuff that's changed. Nothing ever really goes back to normal, does it?

We texted and called each other the rest of that week.

But then I started my station shifts again and Chloe's classes were getting harder.

The last time I saw her in person before I left for LA was the last night I was playing at the club.

The owner had been pretty damn chill about my wanting to pull out as DJ, but what I never would've expected was the business card he placed in my hand.

Turns out he was so impressed with my stuff, that he called an old buddy of his out in LA, and I had an interview/audition to be a house DJ at a new club this guy was opening.

Back to seeing Chloe, she and Aubrey showed up at the club with the rest of the Bellas from last year. Something about a goodbye party before I left.

When the first of January hit, I was hugging my mom in the Seattle airport, about to take this long awaited journey that I've been dreaming of since high school.

The first and only time Chloe came to visit me was when she'd finished up her first year at NYU. We'd planned a whole month together. She'd stay at my small apartment and I'd show her around and we'd do random stuff during the day until we'd be at the club at night (needless to say, I got the DJ-ing position).

And the month was amazing.

Until the last night of her stay crept up.

We'd been getting closer and closer, like it hadn't been a year since we'd last been able to fully hang out with each other.

We ended up getting pretty damn drunk the night before her flight back to New York.

When we got back to my apartment, hours after I'd finished my set, everything was just a mess of lips clashing together. Hands tangling in hair. Tongues fighting for dominance.

We ended up on my bed grinding and groaning, pulling off clothes, and pushing each other to our limits and beyond.

I can still hear the squeak of the bed as she and I ground our centers together until we were biting at exposed skin and crying out as the pleasure and pressure poured out.

It lasted all night.

My mouth devouring her.

Her fingers thrusting in and out.

Rocking against her strong thighs.

Riding my fingers until she collapsed against my sweat covered skin.

Her fiery hair splayed across my pillow as I held her from behind was the last thing I remembered of that trip…

Because the next morning I woke up and she'd already left with nothing more than a flimsy sticky note left on my refrigerator door.

So yeah, it was only supposed to be a one-time thing because she was leaving in the morning. I wasn't supposed to feel heartbroken when I woke up to an empty bed. I wasn't supposed to fall in love with her like that.

But that's what happened, and here we are. A year later and I can still feel the ache when I think about her. When I think about her grand mess of ginger locks, her beautiful smile, that contagious laugh.

It turns out that I really knew how to work the clubs because by the time my first Christmas season in LA was rolling around, the pang of pain that plagued my heart and just the mere thought of Chloe (hell even at the flash of red hair as I walked the streets) became a dull ache because of the busy schedule I had to keep.

When the Bellas arrived, eager to hit the LA bar scene and spend two weeks of winter vacation with me at the beginning of January, I was already fooling myself. I'd become a pro at convincing myself that that night with Chloe never happened.

Stacie was the only one (who said anything to me, because I'm pretty sure the rest of the girls could see right through me) to confront me about Chloe and why I would quickly change the subject when any of the girls brought her up. Thee night I actually allowed myself to cry about it, we went out to the club. I ended up at some nameless redhead's house, fucking her until I was able to forget again.

I let the one friendship I never wanted to fuck up change, and that is the only thing I've regretted since I was forced to attend Barden.

I can't blame my dad for making me go.

I can't blame him for refusing to help me get to LA.

I can't blame Aubrey for being a dictating bitch the entire Bellas season.

I can't blame Jesse, or Sheila, or even regret getting arrested.

I can't even pull myself to regret kissing Jesse at the Lincoln Center.

But I blame myself every day for pushing Chloe away from me. I blame myself for getting so plastered that night and fucking (pretty literally) over the only good thing I had in my life.

One day, I hope things change again.

I hope I get to see her again, I hope she'll forgive me.

…I hope I can forgive her for walking out on me, for leaving without explanation, for ignoring all of my calls and texts.

I hope for once, that when my life changes, it won't royally fuck everything up again.

But hey, that's the thing about change.

It's un-fucking-predictable. You never know when you're going to change, why you're going to change, to what extent.

You start off a year perfectly aware of who you are. But then somewhere down the line, you look back and see that you've been living in a shadow of who you once were, and by the time you realize, life is just fucking you over. You can't go back. You can only succumb to the changes taking place no matter how much you resist and resent and re-place.

/

Beca found Chloe subtly wiping away a few stray tears that had fallen from her eyes when she came home that evening.

"Baby, what's wrong?"

"You never told me how much I hurt you when I walked out on you. Yeah, I knew I messed up when I was on the plane, and then I couldn't bring myself to talk to you because I was so sure you would tell me to fuck off because you hated me, but I never knew…y-you never told me," Chloe explained with more tears welling in her eyes, threatening to spill over. And when she only received a questioning glance from her wife, Chloe handed Beca the notebook she'd found when she was unpacking a few stray boxes from the move into their house.

"Chlo…"

"You should have never forgiven me, Bec! I was horrible. I did everything I told myself I'd never do, everything that you were scared of. How could you forgive me when I showed up at your doorstep, pleading? How could you propose to me, marry me, when I ruined you!"

Beca sighed and smiled before she grabbed Chloe's tear-stained cheeks.

"I love you Chloe. I've loved you for so long. I might have fallen so deeply in love with you the first night we had sex, but in that year and a half I was never able to forget you." She punctuated her statement with a kiss to Chloe's lips. "If I'm completely honest with you, I wanted so badly to just shut the door in your face or to yell about how much you'd hurt me and broken me, but when I looked into your eyes, and heard you angelic voice again, I knew I could never hate you. Even though by that time I'd convinced myself that I did."

Chloe sniffed, her nose running because of her crying. She buried her head into Beca's shoulder and wrapped her arms around her new wife.

"I fell in love with you that night too," she mumbled after a few silent moments and she'd lifted her head up again. "I think part of me always knew that we were meant to be. You'd opened yourself up to me and only me, much more than you ever did with Jesse. But I was so scared. I never thought you could actually love me, when you had spent so many nights denying that you could ever love someone. And then when you broke up with Jesse, how you just kept repeating that you wouldn't let yourself fall again…it became too much when I woke up in your arms."

"Shh," Beca soothed, as she ran her fingers through Chloe's hair. "It's in the past now, love. I love you and I've vowed to you that I will _always_ love you. I forgave you a long time ago."

Chloe choked back a small sob before connecting her lips to Beca's over and over until she was laughing out of almost pure happiness, something that she hadn't truly felt (no matter how much she tried to display it) since she'd left LA that first time. She repeated again and again just how much she loved Beca.

"Change is unpredictable, Chlo. You never know when you're going to change, why you're going to change, to what extent," Beca repeated from the journal she'd written over two years ago. "But right now, you're here with me and as soon as I opened that door, when I saw your beautiful face again, I knew my life was about to change again. And so far, it's been nothing but good. I look forward to growing with you, doing everything with you, and most importantly, changing with you."

"You're such a dork, Beca Mitchell, but I wouldn't love you any other way," Chloe sighed.

Both women smiled, not once believing that their lives could become whole again after being broken into shreds not even a master puzzle doer could put back together. But here they are, happy in each other's arms again.

And tonight when they connect as wives, again and again, they'll not only confirm their love but they'll show it in ways that broke them but now fix their broken hearts every single time.

/

A/N: Well, hey there! I'm back…but only with this. I've had a rough few weeks, getting settled in a new house, taking a rigorous summer course, adjusting to life without parental guidance and etc. But I hope yous enjoyed this little one-shot. (I'm just sorry to say, that I don't know if or when I'll be updating anything else. Don't be mad at me.) I think the ending is a little corny…but hey, I look forward to hearing your thoughts :) so review or not, and have a good day!


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